Photo: Ethnos
"A historic moment for the left and a big responsibility for me personally," said the young leader of SYRIZA Alexis Tsipras to the President of the Republic Carlos Papoulias. Tsipras appeared in Megaro Maximou to get from the President the mandate to form a government as Antonis Samaras failed yesterday in his attempt to form a coalition government. SYRIZA became the second popular party in Greece in the election race last Sunday and received 52 seats in the new parliament.
SYRIZA aims at cancelling the Memorandum of financial aid and write off most of the external debt of Greece. The extreme left does not recognize the external debt that is beyond the ability of the Greeks and believes that the supervisory Troika of the International Monetary Fund, the European Central Bank and the European Commission have nothing to do in Greece. They believe that it cannot provide perspectives for the development of the local economy.
According to the latest information, Alexis Tsipras is going to start talks with the Green environmentalists and Louka Katseli’s Social Agreement to lend a hand. He is determined to seek unity with all the leftist organizations in the country in order to form a left coalition government in Greece. One of the first tasks of SYRIZA will be to repeal the laws blocking the collective agreements and to give impetus to the public sector.
Tsipras will meet with the leader of the Democratic Left Fotis Kouvelis at 3:30 pm. He has invited representatives of the Green environmentalists at meeting in the offices of SYRIZA in Koumoundouoru Square at 5:30 pm and at 7 pm, he will meet with the former minister from the PASOK government Louka Katseli, who is now the leader of the left-centre party Social Agreement. All these parties are united by the idea that the politics imposed by the Memorandum of financial aid should be abolished, but none of them wants Greece to leave the eurozone.
Unlike the New Democracy leader Antonis Samaras, Alexis Tsipras is determined to fight to the end for victory and to form a left cabinet. He will use the three days stipulated in the Constitution to find supporters and has also planned a meeting with representatives of the radical left party ANDARSIYA that failed to pass the 3% limit to have a representative in parliament, but has its supporters. He will also hold a series of meetings with trade unions and workers' unions. Tsipras will finish the course on Thursday when he will hold meetings with Evangelos Venizelos from PASOK, Antonis Samaras from New Democracy and Panos Kamenos from Independent Greeks.